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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Completing the coursework is against the university&apos;s code of conduct!',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The first sentence of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/sports/many-sporting-events-called-off-or-postponed.html">New York Times article</a> left me with a strange feeling.
			It starts out by mentioning a terrorist attack that happened yesterday (at the time of writing), then continues on to explain that it caused several sporting events to be postponed or cancelled.
			So ... a monument of human ingenuity was destroyed, thousands of people died, another few thousand were injured, and the author is concerned with ... sports.
			What kind of person focusses on sports at a time like that?
			Just how little empathy does this author have!?
			The article continued as if the terrorist attack was nothing, and iterated over the various sports leagues and such, explaining which ones had cancelled/postponed their games and which had decided to keep their existing game schedule.
			One person associated with one of the groups was unaccounted for and worked near the towers, so at the time of writing, their safety could not yet be determined (Litsky &amp; Williams, 2001).
			Several golfers left one of the games early because their spouses worked in the towers (Litsky &amp; Williams, 2001), but the wording used by the writer made this sound a little like a bad thing.
			I guess I read all the words on the page, but the article didn&apos;t have my attention very well.
			I was still in awe of how cold the writer was.
		</p>
		<p>
			The opening paragraph on the <a href="https://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751">ESPN article</a> was much more empathetic.
			The writer says they were writing about sports at the time it happened, but sports quickly seemed irrelevant once they got the horrible news (Thompson, n.d.).
			With a narrator that was actually showing emotion instead of relaying completely-irrelevant facts about game schedule disruptions, I was much more interested in what the author had to say.
			The story continued, using estimated numbers to demonstrate just how bad the devastation was.
			A couple thousand died in the attack; a few hundred firefighters perished soon after trying to prevent further destruction (Thompson, n.d.).
			The randomly-capitalised, non-proper nouns were a bit distracting, but the imagery painted by the writer about facing an unknown enemy was strong.
		</p>
		<p>
			I definitely liked that second article, the one from ESPN, much better.
			I can&apos;t be expected to care about news on cancelled sports games when thousands of people just died.
			For that matter, I don&apos;t even care about sports when <strong>*no one*</strong> is dying!
			This second article certainly kept my attention better, but it wasn&apos;t strictly the narrative that did that for me.
			It was also the subject matter.
			The first article was about sports games getting cancelled, and cited the attack as the cause.
			The attack was not the subject matter though, merely an explanation for the subject matter.
			The second article&apos;s subject was the devastation.
			Cancelled sports games were so irrelevant that they weren&apos;t even mentioned.
			I agree that narration can make or break a story, but these two articles are a very poor example of that.
			The subject matter of these two articles is only <strong>*tangentially*</strong> related, if you&apos;re actually paying attention.
			Of course the story that focuses on the more interesting topic is going to be the one that grabs your attention better.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h2>References:</h2>
			<p>
				Litsky, F. &amp; Williams, L. (2001, September 12). Many Sporting Events Called Off or Postponed. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/sports/many-sporting-events-called-off-or-postponed.html"><code>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/sports/many-sporting-events-called-off-or-postponed.html</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				Thompson, H. S. (n.d.). ESPN.com: Page 2 : Fear &amp; Loathing in America. Retrieved from <a href="https://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751"><code>https://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		After work, I posted in the general forum for the course the following:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I printed off ten copies of my survey this morning, and took them with me when I went out for the day, hoping to get some friends to fill them out for me.
			Thankfully though, just before I handed out the first one, happened to think about the university&apos;s code of conduct.
			Handing out these surveys would be a violation of it, as we&apos;re not allowed to share work we&apos;ve submitted for class, and we submitted these questionnaires in our learning journals last week!
			Anyway, since we need to get these filled out, I was hoping we could fill out each other&apos;s surveys.
			If you&apos;ve got the time and would like to help me out, please reply with answers to these survey questions.
			Likewise, if you submit your own survey here, I&apos;ll reply with my responses to yours.
		</p>
		<ol start="0">
			<li>
				What is your main determining factor when you decide what products to buy? (brand reputation, price, company ethics, et cetera)
			</li>
			<li>
				How often do you research the companies that you buy from?
			</li>
			<li>
				If you learned a company you frequently buy from was engaging in anticompetitive practices, would you continue to purchase their products?
			</li>
			<li>
				If you learned a company you frequently buy from was mistreating their workers, would you continue to use purchase their products?
			</li>
			<li>
				How regularly do you consider the the environmental impact of the products you buy or the companies you buy from?
			</li>
			<li>
				If you knew a company you would otherwise purchase from was outsourcing to sweatshops, would that influence your purchasing decisions?
			</li>
			<li>
				Do you believe corporations should be paying taxes? If so, would you still buy from a company that you knew was getting out of paying as much of their taxes as they could legally get away with?
			</li>
			<li>
				Would you consider owning stock in a company you felt was engaging in unethical behaviour?
			</li>
			<li>
				Would you consider working for a company you felt engaged in unethical activities? If so, would you feel at least partly responsible for your actions and the actions of the company, or would you feel that as you&apos;re following orders, you&apos;re not the one to blame?
			</li>
			<li>
				Do you feel there are enough restrictions on businesses to adequately keep the public safe, or should there be more? Less?
			</li>
		</ol>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I can&apos;t believe I printed out copies of the survey this morning.
		This goes against the university&apos;s noxious code of conduct!
		Likely, someone, probably the professor, will write in either asking for a clarification or saying it&apos;s okay for this one assignment.
		And if they ask for a clarification, they&apos;ll <strong>*then*</strong> say it&apos;s okay for this one assignment.
		But it&apos;s not okay.
		Rules are rules.
		The school doesn&apos;t get to censor me and keep my school life from bleeding into my home life when they want to, then <strong>*make*</strong> my school life bleed into my home life when it&apos;s convenient for them.
		Hopefully I get enough bites.
		If not, I&apos;ll <strong>*make up*</strong> questionnaire answers, if that&apos;s the only way to complete the assignment.
		I honestly am going to try to get proper responses from other students though.
		I really will.
		And to give me a little extra chance of getting the results I need, I&apos;ve also posted this in my maths course&apos;s general forum.
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			In my other current course, <span title="English Composition 2">ENGL 1102</span>, we&apos;re writing up research papers and need people to fill out our questionnaires.
			If you&apos;ve got the time and would like to help a fellow student out, could you please reply here with responses to these questions?
			Thank you very much.
		</p>
		<ol start="0">
			<li>
				What is your main determining factor when you decide what products to buy? (brand reputation, price, company ethics, et cetera)
			</li>
			<li>
				How often do you research the companies that you buy from?
			</li>
			<li>
				If you learned a company you frequently buy from was engaging in anticompetitive practices, would you continue to purchase their products?
			</li>
			<li>
				If you learned a company you frequently buy from was mistreating their workers, would you continue to use purchase their products?
			</li>
			<li>
				How regularly do you consider the the environmental impact of the products you buy or the companies you buy from?
			</li>
			<li>
				If you knew a company you would otherwise purchase from was outsourcing to sweatshops, would that influence your purchasing decisions?
			</li>
			<li>
				Do you believe corporations should be paying taxes? If so, would you still buy from a company that you knew was getting out of paying as much of their taxes as they could legally get away with?
			</li>
			<li>
				Would you consider owning stock in a company you felt was engaging in unethical behaviour?
			</li>
			<li>
				Would you consider working for a company you felt engaged in unethical activities? If so, would you feel at least partly responsible for your actions and the actions of the company, or would you feel that as you&apos;re following orders, you&apos;re not the one to blame?
			</li>
			<li>
				Do you feel there are enough restrictions on businesses to adequately keep the public safe, or should there be more? Less?
			</li>
		</ol>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		On second thought, I think if I get at least five responses, I won&apos;t forge any answers.
		I&apos;ll just write about the issue in my results report for the week.
	</p>
	<p>
		While I was in the maths forum, I noticed a question from another student from a couple days ago.
		They were asking about a question on the coursework due <strong>*that day*</strong>.
		Asking at the last minute, you can&apos;t expect a response on time, but explained how to find the domain and range of an inverse function for them just the same, in case they still want to know for their own education.
		If it were me, I&apos;d want my questions answered, even if too late to apply to the coursework.
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The domain of the inverse function is going to be the <strong>*range*</strong> of the original function.
			Likewise, the range of the inverse function will the the <strong>*domain*</strong> of the initial function.
			Because the forward and reverse functions swap their inputs and outputs, they also swap their domains and ranges with one another.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<img src="/y.st./source/y.st./static/img/CC_BY-SA_3.0/minetest.net./weblog/2018/03/02.png" alt="The bottom of my tunnel-in-progress" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="600"/>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve been filling in the major caves in my way with gravel as I&apos;ve tried to dig past them, so now, I can dig straight down without dying pretty well.
		I&apos;m switching back to plan A: Take out the stone (and now gravel) one column at a time.
		In the screenshot above, you can see the mini-map, which shows I&apos;ve carved a little over halfway around the perimeter.
		I&apos;m stopping for now though, due to slightly-altered plans elsewhere.
	</p>
	<p>
		I was thinking today while washing dishes at work about how to differentiate the nine major cities I&apos;m starting and connecting via the tunnel system.
		I&apos;ve always wanted to have nine major activity hubs, very distant, but connected.
		(Okay, that&apos;s actually a lie.
		If I recall, my initial plan years ago involved <strong>*twenty-five*</strong> towns, but it was due to a misunderstanding at the time on my part about the boundaries of the game world.)
		I&apos;d like to set themes for the different cities, and I&apos;d like it if players that join the world when it eventually (maybe) goes public mostly stuck to those themes when building in and near the cities, but they&apos;re not going to do that.
		They&apos;re going to build whatever they feel like.
		So what will differentiate the towns?
		I&apos;ve decided to revise my building plans.
		I&apos;d previously planned to keep most of my stuff underground, out of the way.
		Nope.
		Not any more.
		I&apos;m not only going to build the central towers of the cities, which house the entrances to the underground tunnel network, but also going to put my own buildings in the cities I want to theme.
		If other players break the theme, that&apos;ll be just fine; each town will still have some of the theme I seek to give it.
		I&apos;m also going to build the towers out of materials relating to the themes, instead of the previously-planned stone bricks.
		That pretty much means five of the towers, including the central one, will be at least partly made of wood.
	</p>
	<p>
		There are general node groups I want the town themes to incorporate, but I don&apos;t want those nodes to be the defining aspect of the town.
		In other words, the themes will be inspired by certain nodes, but the towns are not necessarily <strong>*limited*</strong> to using those nodes only.
		Two rural towns were planned, one with a larger interest in cotton, and the other wheat.
		I might make the cotton town less rural than previously planned though.
		The only use for cotton, besides building a farm environment, is crafting wool.
		(In Minetest, wool is basically refined cotton.)
		Wool is then dyed, yielding any of fifteen colourful, nearly-solid-coloured nodes that don&apos;t particularly look like they belong as part of a build.
		At work, I decided what to do with all that colour: build a queer town.
		It&apos;ll probably be called Pride City or something.
		And that&apos;s where I&apos;ll build my castle of queerness.
	</p>
	<p>
		It&apos;s all but decided that the central town will be themed using pine trees and diamonds.
		Pine trees produce snow (yeah, an odd concept), so I&apos;ll give the city the tag line &quot;city of snow and ice&quot;.
		That&apos;s right, it&apos;s not ice as in what you&apos;d find in a glacier, but ice as in diamonds.
		It&apos;s such a terrible pun, but I love it.
	</p>
	<p>
		With my builds now going to the surface world instead of underground, I think it&apos;s best I get all nine towns started right away instead of waiting on each one until I&apos;ve connected it via the tunnel network.
		When inspiration strikes, I don&apos;t want to have to just let that inspiration go because I don&apos;t have the appropriate town set up yet.
		That also means I&apos;ve got to have a way to zip around the map.
		It&apos;s probably a good several hours of walking between the main cities, especially because the terrain isn&apos;t flat; it even will involve a lot of swimming.
		I wasn&apos;t planning to add any map-altering mods just yet, but it looks like plans will need to change.
		I need to get built the yellow beds mod I&apos;d planned to make before.
		With yellow beds, you can set warp points at places you&apos;ve been before.
		I&apos;ll still need to walk/swim to those places the first time, which is by design because I don&apos;t want players just warping to where they&apos;ve never been, but it&apos;ll make later travel much more feasible.
		Yellow beds are limited by your farming skill though, so I need to first finish stabilising <code>minestats</code>.
		And before I release the new <code>minestats</code> code, I need to finish the <code>minestats_sfinv</code> code.
		Or did I do that already?
		I don&apos;t recall.
		I&apos;ll have to check on it.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once all the code&apos;s in order, the plan is to dig down to y=-288 at one location, construct the vertical tunnel segment and tower at that location, place a yellow bed there to enable a quick return, then move on to the next location.
		Once all nine towers have been erected, I&apos;ll focus on the horizontal tunnels connecting them.
		Meanwhile, I can take some time for more interesting builds when I feel like it as well, though only after the appropriate tower for that theme has been finished.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
